This blog is affiliated with a course at the School of Journalism & Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I'll try to use it to share relevant news and information with the class, and anyone else who's interested.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Goin' Mobile- Global Stats

I was doing some data collection for a piece on broadband last week, and ran across some interesting statistics, courtesy of the ITU. All results are for 2011.

Globally, there's almost five times the number of mobile/cellular subscriptions (5.972 billion) as there are fixed-line telephone subscriptions (1.204 billion). The ratio is higher in developing areas than in developed areas.

For (basic) broadband subscriptions, the differential is less, although there are still more active mobile broadband subscriptions (1.1 billion) than fixed-line broadband subscriptions (589 million).

In developed countries, ICTs and Web access are widespread. Looking at households, 74.2% have computers, and 70.3% have Internet access. Among individuals, 70.2% are Internet users, about half have mobile broadband subscriptions, and a quarter have fixed-line broadband subscriptions.

Penetration in developing countries is much lower (with wider variations in reported levels). On average, fewer than one in four households have a computer, and about 1 in 5 have Internet access. Regional differences in household ownership of computers ranges from 6.4% in Africa to 31% in Arab states, to 75.3% in Europe (somewhat fewer homes have Internet access). The proportion of Internet users run from 12.4% in Africa to 68.4% among Europeans.